Skip to main content

Many Orthopedic Surgery Patients Low on Vitamin D

Levels should be brought up to normal before operation, researchers say

By Robert Preidt
Friday, October 8, 2010 

HealthDay news image

Related MedlinePlus Pages

FRIDAY, Oct. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly half of patients undergoing orthopedic surgery have vitamin D deficiency, which can impair their recovery, researchers say.

In these cases, patients' vitamin D levels need to be brought up to normal levels before they undergo surgery, according to researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Vitamin D is essential for bone healing and muscle function.

"In the perfect world, test levels, fix and then operate," study leader Dr. Joseph Lane, a professor of orthopedic surgery and chief of the hospital's Metabolic Bone Disease Service, said in a hospital news release.

According to Lane, an important part of the healing process -- bone tissue formation -- occurs around two to four weeks after surgery and is the critical period that the body needs vitamin D.

"If you put people on 2,000 to 4,000 [milligrams] of vitamin D based on what their deficient value was, you can usually get them corrected in four to six weeks, which is when you are really going to need the vitamin D," said Lane. "If you are really aggressive right before surgery, you can correct deficient levels quickly, but you have to correct it, measure it, and then act on it."

For this study, Lane and colleagues retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 723 patients who had orthopedic surgery between January 2007 and March 2008 at the Hospital for Special Surgery. The investigators found that 43 percent of the patients had had vitamin D insufficiency (20 nanograms per milliliter [ng/mL] to less than 32 ng/mL) and 40 percent had had vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/mL).

Low vitamin D levels were most common in younger patients, men, and blacks and Hispanics.

"The take-home message is that low vitamin D has an implication in terms of muscle and fracture healing, it occurs in about 50 percent of people coming in for orthopedic surgery, and it is eminently correctable," Lane said.

Comments

  1. AshmitaNovember 9, 2015 at 3:04 AM

    Board Certified Plastic Surgeon Dr. Milan Doshi offers Weight loss surgery in Mumbai. Call today+919869041559

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Low cost Bariatric Surgery in India for obese people with amazing cost saving for International Patients

Obesity now days being worlds most affecting health disorder and giving rise to a lot of various health hazards is the biggest threat to population through out the world. Our Low cost Bariatric surgery is the best proven method that results in a durable weight loss. Diets and other medical plans for weight loss have been shown to have very poor long term results and all with inability to maintain the weight loss. Long term weight loss without Bariatric surgery is only achieved by 5-10% of obese women, man and children. The people getting the Bariatric surgery throughout the world is the highest in western country itself it is estimated that around every year more than 200,000 bariatric surgeries are being performed in US itself still a lot of people needing the surgery  are unable to the get the surgery because of various factors such as the high end cost of the surgery, the surgery not being covered by the insurance or sometimes not getting the appointments. These have been...
23 comments
Read more

Ideal medical tourism destination

Goa with it combination of super specialty hospitals and luxurious hotels, has been touted as an ideal medical tourism destination where ailing foreigners can combine a relaxing holiday with cheap but effective medical treatment. But the state is seeing a new trend: hitching onto the medico-leisure bandwagon are dentists who are offering their services at a fraction of the price their foreign clients would expect to pay at home.  Dr. Ambert Pimenta, for example catches the attention of prospective clients with a simple promise: get your dental treatment in Goa and holiday for free. His website ( www.goadentist.com ) says, "Yes as I promised, here is how you can make your holiday to Goa absolutely FREE ! Consider how much you pay in Europe or America ...are the long lines and frustrating long waits at an NHS dentist wearing you down ? Compare our pricing with that of any NHS service or private practice for that matter, we will leave the competition behind. The subsequent arithmetic...
3 comments
Read more

Indian Medical Travel Association (Imta) Participates In The Incredible India “Medical Tourism Road Shows Held By Indian Ministry Of Tourism

Middle East and Gulf in particular as a  market for promoting medical tourism to India holds great potential.  Traditionally patients have been coming to India from the region to leading hospitals in Mumbai and Chennai and the more affluent of them were preferring to go to Europe and America. But now with the establishing of over  100 most modern NABH and JCI  internationally accredited hospitals in top ten cities of India during the last five years, no other country in the world can match the capacity, quality and cost value proposition that Indian hospitals have to offer to the overseas patients looking for advanced medical treatment options. The phenomenon, now popularly known as Medical Tourism is often cited as the next big opportunity for India after the IT outsourcing to earn billions of dollars in forex earnings and create jobs in the healthcare sector. So far only a select group of Indian hospitals have been making valiant attempts to market their...
2 comments
Read more